Native Science understands that nature is technology – a compost pile is a massively-tested super-applicable multifaceted waste management system resulting from four billion years of research and development where you put food waste in and get high-yield fertilizer out and the whole process is carbon neutral!

I imagine a Steampunk North America (Turtle Island) in which the buffalo population wasn’t deliberately eradicated for genocidal purposes and which thus still enjoys the resources of vast areas of tall grass prairie (you need buffalo to have prairie as much as you need prairie to have buffalo because many seeds will not germinate correctly or thrive without passing through a buffalo’s digestive system unless human intervention is applied). I imagine a Turtle Island in which deforestation is severely curtailed and vast areas of old-growth forest are deliberatly maintained. I imagine city architecture utilizing rammed-earth walls and green roofs on large communal buildings, and time-tested local building technologies on smaller, private residences. I imagine populous cities designed for walkability and communal pedestrian culture. I imagine a North America in which the Black Hills are not defaced with gigantic carved graffiti of doofy white dudes.

By the 19th century in my alternate timeline, Turtle Island has a thriving, technologically advanced pan-Indian culture, a collective of independent nations with distinct regionalisms that has a UN-like organization to engage with the global community. A group of nations that meets Europe as equals and trades technology and cultural influences as such.

- From “Musing About Native Steampunk”

Justifying racism using “science” isn’t new, by any means. Every few years, it appears that someone needs to provide a rationale for bigotry, so they publish some sort of madness and hope most of the readers suffer from scientific illiteracy. The problem is that even with a thorough debunking, people latch on to articles like this to confirm their own biases. So, if you are suddenly confronted with racist foolishness masquerading as science, here is how to respond. Since it’s here, let’s use the Psychology Today article (available in full here) as an example.

Look at the Methodology

Whenever you hear the word “study,” start checking for the methodology. Oftentimes, a methodology will reveal more about the study than the summarized results.

A good example of this is a study we were alerted to a year or so ago. The Daily Mail covered a scientific study which proposed that racism may be hard wired into our brains. However, there was an obvious flaw in the study:

All the viewers were white but the researchers believe the results would still have been similar with any other group.

Now, this study wasn’t using basic things, like a sample representative of population. Yet the study authors felt confident in applying the results to everyone.

The same issue pops up in Satoshi Kanazawa’s piece. He actually doesn’t refer to his own research, but another study. And he doesn’t link to the other study, assuming that all readers will know the term “Add Health.” What he refers to is a rigorous, national study…about teen development and health.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (also known as Add Health, the Add Health Study, and the Add Health Survey) is a nationally representative study originally designed to examine how social contexts (such as families, friends, peers, schools, neighborhoods, and communities) influence teens’ health and risk behaviors. The study is now examining how health changes over the course of early adulthood. [...]

The Add Health Study surveyed 90,000 7th to 12th graders, and has re-interviewed the same group of teens as they age. The study is made public to assist others studying adolescent health, and collects information on the following:

What kinds of topics does the study address?
The study collects information on:

*Physical and mental health, such as weight and height, injury and disability, dietary patterns and physical activity, substance use, access to and use of health care services, and suicide and depression
*Interpersonal relationships and sexual behaviors, such as family relationships, friendships, interracial relationships, faith community interactions, sexual activity, and sexual orientation
*Education, including cognitive ability and individual, family, peer, and community influences on school performance
*Delinquency and violence, including individual, family, peer, and community influences on delinquency and violence and risk factors for delinquency and violence
*Involvement in adult roles, including parenthood, jobs, marriage
*Genetic characteristics and biological measures that indicate the presence of specific diseases and disease processes
*Measures of the environments in which participants live and go to school

So this study provides a lot of data on the lives of teens. However, Kanazawa tries to pull information that wasn’t intended to be studied from the report, with no further discussion or references, and present it as fact. (In fact, would you know what the Add Health study was intended to do if we didn’t look it up?) Problematic, to say the least.

We had issues with Allure’s report on the changing face of beauty in the United States, but at least their methodology was much more clear – we knew how many people were surveyed, the images of the models they were shown, what questions they were asked, and how that compared to a similar survey done twenty years ago.

Interrogate the Author of the Study

Kanazawa calls himself “The Scientific Fundamentalist,” and claims to take “a Hard Look at the Truths of Human Nature.” His other articles include things like “Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes,” “Beautiful People Really ARE More Intelligent,” “What I Have Learned from Barry Goldwater,” and this statement on Eva Longoria and Tony Parker’s divorce:

Yes, I called it, nearly two years ago. I knew their marriage was very short-lived long before they themselves did. Once again, such is the power of the evolutionary psychological imagination. We know everything, not because we are special, but because we are evolutionary psychologists.

I’m a Mac, and I predict events before they happen.

I’m afraid to click the links for that rationale.

Amazingly, Kanazawa’s work fits neatly into this bingo card, created by the Punk Ass Blog:

Check for Scientific Racism

Wikipedia has a very useful summary (and a few interesting convos on the talk page) dealing with Scientific Racism. But the clearest example is actually found on the Wikipedia page for The Bell Curve, where an intrepid Wikipedian added a debunking guide for racist misapplications of science:

Evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves described the Bell Curve as an example of racist science, containing all the types of errors in the application of scientific method that have characterized the history of Scientific racism:

claims that are not supported by the data given

errors in calculation that invariably support the hypothesis

no mention of data that contradicts the hypothesis

no mention of theories and data that conflict with core assumptions

bold policy recommendations that are consistent with those advocated by racists.[38]

Be Wary of People Trying to Quantify What is Subjective

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And yet, every few years, someone tries to prove that x is definitively more attractive than y group. The closest science has been able to come to anything remotely resembling consensus is a link between symmetry and facial attractiveness.

Everything else is informed by personal preferences, how one interprets beauty, and cultural messages about beauty – which again, do change. What was beautiful in the 1980s and 1990s isn’t necessarily valued today. And globally, the idea of beauty shifts often. So trying to definitively state what is attractive and what is not is a bit of a losing game.

Remember that race is a social construct

Racebox.org shows how these alleged racial categories have changed over time. Here’s who you could be in 1890:

1940:

and 1970:

Combine that with the shifting categories of “black” and “white” and how people have been included and excluded based on political whims, and trying to explain definitive differences becomes an exercise in futility.

—

Related:

White People Swim, and Black People Run? Race, Science, and Athletics – Racialicious
Scientific Findings are not Public Service Announcements – Restructure
Interview with Joseph L. Graves – Addicted to Race
Guest Rant: Joseph L. Graves – Addicted to Race
James Watson’s Racism – Addicted to Race

(Image via PhD Comics, by Jorge Cham)

Thanks to readers Ruthi, Karen, and Lorenzo for sending in copies of the article!

Compiled By Arturo R. García

Since bar graphs make everything truer, we present a pictorial representation definitively showing that although Kanazawa was pretty much the worst before his post on black women, he is now even worster.*

*As measured by the Jezebel Worstness Index, developed by leading Worstologist Anna North of Jezebel University, Internet Campus. Margin of error = +/- a million.
- Anna North, Jezebel

Few articles in recent memory have stirred a response from our readers like this piece, originally posted at Psychology Today, in which “evolutionary psychologist” Satoshi Kanazawa states, “As the following graph shows, black women are statistically no different from the “average” Add Health respondent, and far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women.”

Kanazawa, a regular contributor to Psychology Today, says he arrived at this theory, based on data in which black women were constantly rated as “less attractive” compared to women from other races. However, he says, “even though black women are objectively less physically attractive than other women, black women (and men) subjectively consider themselves to be far more physically attractive than others.”

After dismissing black women’s “much heavier body mass” or disparities in intelligence, he comes to one conclusion for his findings:

The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone. Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races, and testosterone, being an androgen (male hormone), affects the physical attractiveness of men and women differently. Men with higher levels of testosterone have more masculine features and are therefore more physically attractive. In contrast, women with higher levels of testosterone also have more masculine features and are therefore less physically attractive. The race differences in the level of testosterone can therefore potentially explain why black women are less physically attractive than women of other races, while (net of intelligence) black men are more physically attractive than men of other races.

The article was pulled from Psychology Today’s website without explanation Monday afternoon. Latoya is putting together a roundtable discussion on the article, which we’ll post here soon, but in the meantime, thanks to our readers who mailed us a tip on it. Here’s a collection of views from around the blogosphere:

“The only thing I can think of”? Really? The blog’s presentation of the allegedly scientific findings had a decidedly informal tone, especially given the highly contentious conclusions. It struck us as so outrageous that we almost thought it was a hoax of some sort, and we double-checked the URL to make sure it didn’t include “The Onion.”
- Jenée Desmond-Harris, The Root

As I hold back my temper thinking as a woman, I already have cultural pressures to be something other than what I am in terms of a beauty standard, but I cannot believe this complete failure of an attempt to scientfically prove I’m less attractive than a white woman (assuming the same general characteristics).

What is absurd about the premise is what is he basing it on? “Black” women run the gamut of able to pass for white, to dark-skinned afro-centric features. We have dead straight blonde hair to ultra-nappy fros. Who participated and what did they look like? Who knows, that information isn’t there.

Any “scientific analysis” is fool’s gold without any context to historical sociological or ethnographic impact on majority and minority populations in regards to notions of physical attractiveness. Yet Kanazawa is trying so hard to make it work that you get the feeling that he gave himself a migraine.
- Pam Spaulding, Pam’s House Blend

Shame on Psychology Today for being a willing instrument to perpetuate racism. But I can’t be surprised, can I? It seems like every other week we hear NFL players saying “they don’t like black girls,” (c)rap songs calling us hoes and b*tches, and news of how some regions of Africa rape 48 black women per hour. Per. Hour. And with no one coming to our defense, it’s just implied that we’re denfense-less. This kind of soul-killing propaganda has got to stop, but I have a feeling it’s going to have to be black women making a concerted effort to work together and say “Enough is enough.”
- Christelyn Kazarin, Madame Noire

Perhaps at another point in my life, I would laugh this off as the musings of someone too stupid to realize how racist he is. But we live in an environment where the President of the United States is repeatedly forced to produce his birth certificate to prove that he was born in this country and where one of the leading candidates on the Republican side repeatedly characterizes the President’s attitude as “Kenyan anti-colonialist” and produces dog whistles like “food stamp president looking to make the entire country like Detroit”. This is not an isolated event by an insulated individual. This is a nasty undercurrent that simmers below the surface all the time and that has been bubbling up more and more frequently. And after being tangentially part of some rather heated online discussions about race and privilege recently, I don’t know that we can ever truly work towards a more progressive future without acknowledging and dealing with this.
- Nicole Belle, Crooks And Liars

Idiot.

This is a long-standing problem with evolutionary psychology proponents, despite the field’s potential use in principle: there’s a desire to reduce any and all perceptions and societal norms as being the result of evolutionary selective pressures. Why? Because if it’s the result of biology—not sociological trends—then we have an excuse to cling to ignorant perceptions, stereotypes, and norms. Kanazawa has a long track record of pushing studies and narratives such as this (this isn’t his first time on the issue of race) and he is unfortunately not unique. All of these studies have one thing in common: they have no methodological basis to link some aspect or behavior being measured with a history of evolutionary selective pressures.

Black women are beautiful.

Black. Women. Are. Beautiful.

F-ck this asshole. Contact Psychology Today to express your disapproval. I think this needs to go beyond taking his article down.
- The Erratic Synapse, The Daily Kos

So I am up at five, again, but this time for a good cause. The Takeaway (NYC) is hosting a show on a new study that is causing tongues to wag:

Biomechanical researchers analysed 100 years of athletes’ heights, weights and running and swimming records, and demonstrated how the placement of one’s center of gravity affects one’s athletic performance. No big deal, right? People got jumpy, however, when the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics published the paper: “The Evolution of Speed in Athletics: Why the Fastest Runners are Black and Swimmers are White.”

We talk with two of the scientists behind the study: Dr. Adrian Bejan of Duke University and Edward Jones, of Howard University, about why their team embarked on this project, the science enlisted in their research, and the specifics of the study’s outcomes.

We also talk with Latoya Peterson of Racialicious.com about why these sorts of studies make so many people squeamish, and whether, in a post-racial society, it makes sense to conduct studies on groups of people based on shared physical characteristics. What’s your take? Are race-based studies inherently racist?

The show is live at 6 AM ET – or, you can listen to the podcast and comment here a bit later in the day.

Update:

Just finished the show, and, as usual, the supertight constraints of radio mean a lot was left unsaid.

I received the papers by Bejan and Jones last night as part of my prep for the segment, and noticed something interesting.  Bejan has published two other studies that didn’t grab headlines: “The Evolution of Speed, Size, and Shape in Modern Athletics” (2009, with Jordan D. Charles) and “Constructing Animal Locomation from New Thermodynamics Theory” (2006, with James H. Marden).  For Bejan, this is another paper in a research cycle, looking at changes in speed and dynamics through a variety of lenses.  But the reason this paper grabbed headlines is because of the racial angle.

I am reminded of the PhD comic linked to by a reader a while back:

And this is kind of what happened with this study.  The actual paper states in the third paragraph (or fourth, if you count the abstract):

Our approach is to study phenotypic (somatotypic) differences of human locomotion in different media (terrestrial vs. aquatic), which we consider to have been historically misclassified as racial characteristics. These differences represent consequences of still not well-understood variable environmental stimuli for survival fitness in different parts of the globe during thousands of years of habitation [3–6]. Our study does not advance the notion of race, now recognized as a social construct, as opposed to a biological construct. We acknowledge the wide phenotypic and genotypic diversity among the so-called racial types.

Yet, the study is being distilled simply as blacks are better runners, whites are better swimmers.

When this happened on air, I forfeited a statement spot* to push the question back to the study authors. The researchers used the terms “black” and “white” but were really talking about regions, particularly in the case of runners. However, when the segment wrapped, I hoped listeners had taken some of the more important parts of the study with them. The point of the convo was not to have people to rail against research, but to understand and critically analyze research and context.  Jones sent out an email to those of us on the segment, saying:

1) My contribution was in bringing the relevant comparative body composition literature to the table.

2) Future research design that would seem logical to do, if this science is deemed sound, useful and relevant to pursue — may include a longitudinal, prospective (from this point forward) study that attempted to standardize factors such as socioeconomic status, access to similar athletic training swimming or running), and other such factors among different members of a representative sample from different population groups (e.g., blacks of various subtypes, whites of various subtypes, and Asians of various subtypes) to see if the differences remain. Technically, this type of study could be argued as required before the findings in the recent paper by Bejan, Jones & Charles (2010) might be considered proved/disproved. Retrospective studies such as this are useful, but clearly have methodical limitations given the lack of standardization and control in study designs.

When a newspaper publishes an article about a recent scientific study concerning humans, it is almost expected that people with a political agenda will pick and choose parts of the article that support their view, and ignore those parts that invalidate it. The science writers may even intentionally and deliberately insert clarifications and disclaimers to make sure the article is inconsistent with a popular incorrect political view, but people with an agenda will ignore the clarifications and disclaimers because they don’t understand it, they reject nuances, or because they simply ignore information that does not fit into their worldview. [...]

Of course, this is a complete misunderstanding of how scientific research works. Almost all scientific studies are not done to educate the general public; they are done to explore the unexplored territory in the field. The primary audience of a scientific paper is other scientists in the field. Only after the original paper endures years of debate and replications among the scientific community do the new findings make it into the canon of an undergraduate textbook. Most published studies do not make it into this canon, and are read by only a small circle of specialists.

In other words, many members of the public assume that scientific studies are conducted for them instead of for other scientists. Given this assumption, it is not too much of logical leap for them to suppose that the scientists conducted a particular controversial study with the nefarious intention to advance a political (e.g., right-wing) agenda.

The whole reason I jumped on the radio this morning was to say this: Talking about race and science are similar because both topics become a bit distorted in national conversations, despite efforts by anti-racists and by many scientists to make sure that everyone is working from a clear understanding of the underlying assumptions and principles.  The problem with research around race isn’t that simple research exists – its that people take this research and consider it the absolute truth, which is then used to prop up existing prejudices.

Now, I’m not saying that scientists can’t be racist or put together flawed studies in support of prejudice.  But I am saying that these matters are complicated, and we should be skeptical of what conclusions are drawn from what types of data.

–

*I said forfeited a statement spot, which is a direct result of my media training. While listening to the scientists talk during their segment, I realized they were trying to answer the questions as thoroughly as possible – which meant they kept getting cut off.  The radio and tv environment does want some clarity, but they really thrive on soundbytes.  So, now when I am asked a question, I’m not thinking “what’s the best way to answer this question?” but rather “what’s the best way to answer this question in 30 seconds and in a way that will be remembered.” Our super condensed media cycle may also be an explanation as to why its hard to have clarity in larger national conversations.

(And I need to give a big thank you to the commenters on Racialicious who are part of the science community -  you all have really helped shape how we approach these discussions.)

A post at the Pursuit of Harpyness alerted us to a new book on race and bioethics: Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  The following is from Skloot’s website:

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave…

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

The Pursuit of Harpyness elaborates on this last point, saying:

But what struck me most was the fact that in a country with a more functional social safety net – universal health care, social assistance, half-decent public schools – the disparities between the Lackses’s situation, and the incredible wealth generated by the medical knowledge it occasioned, wouldn’t be so stark. They would have actively benefited from this research just like everyone else.

Learn more about the book at Skloot’s website.

Reader Elton sent in an intriguing article from The UK’s Telegraph. The headline says it all:

Charles Darwin’s research to prove evolution was motivated by his desire to end slavery.

The piece explains:

Science historians Adrian Desmond and James Moore have compiled compelling new evidence which reveals Darwin was passionately opposed to slavery and this was the moral impetus behind his work.

Private notes and letters uncovered by the pair reveal that Darwin’s opinions on slavery were far stronger than had previously been believed.

Notebooks from his five year voyage on HMS Beagle, during which Darwin first began to form his famous theories on natural selection, detail his revulsion at the slavery he witnessed in South America.

The historians have also discovered letters written by Darwin’s sisters, cousins and aunts that reveal the family as highly active abolitionists. Darwin’s grandfather and uncles were also key members of the anti-slavery movement.

The pair claim in a new book that Darwin partly chose to highlight the common descent of man from apes to show that all races were equal, as a rebuttal to those who insisted black people were a different, and inferior, species from those with white skin.

When Elton sent in the link, he noted:

A big theory of mine is that the whole “intelligent design”/natural selection debate is deeply rooted in the struggle between those who would seek to extend the white Christian hegemony and those who would seek to dismantle it through science. Unfortunately, the media always portrays it as some dense philosophical debate, without any implications for social power structures.

Thoughts?

In its current issue, Greater Good magazine ponders “Are we born racist?” and in the article “Look Twice,” Susan T. Fiske, Ph.D., Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, offers some bad news and good news:

Most people think they’re less biased than average. But just as we can’t all be better than average, we can’t all be less prejudiced than average. Although the message—and the success so far—of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign suggests an America that is moving past traditional racial divisions and prejudices, it’s probably safe to assume that all of us harbor more biases than we think.

Science suggests that most of us don’t even know the half of it. A 20-year eruption of research from the field of “social neuroscience” reveals exactly how automatically and unconsciously prejudice operates. As members of a society with egalitarian ideals, most Americans have good intentions. But new research suggests our brains and our impulses all too often betray us. That’s the bad news.

But here’s the good news: More recent research shows that our prejudices are not inevitable; they are actually quite malleable, shaped by an ever-changing mix of cultural beliefs and social circumstances. While we may be hardwired to harbor prejudices against those who seem different or unfamiliar to us, it’s possible to override our worst impulses and reduce these prejudices. Doing so requires more than just good intentions; it requires broad social efforts to challenge stereotypes and get people to work together across group lines. But a vital first step is learning about the biological and psychological roots of prejudice.

Modern prejudice

Here’s the first thing to understand: Modern prejudice is not your grandparents’ prejudice.

Old-fashioned racism and sexism were known quantities because people would mostly say what they thought. Blacks were lazy; Jews were sly; women were either dumb or bitchy. Modern equivalents continue, of course—look at current portrayals of Mexican immigrants as criminals (when, in fact, crime rates in Latino neighborhoods are lower than those of other ethnic groups at comparable socioeconomic levels). Most estimates suggest such blatant and wrongheaded bigotry persists among only 10 percent of citizens in modern democracies. Blatant bias does spawn hate crimes, but these are fortunately rare (though not rare enough). At the very least, we can identify the barefaced bigots.

Our own prejudice—and our children’s and grandchildren’s prejudice, if we don’t address it—takes a more subtle, unexamined form. Neuroscience has shown that people can identify another person’s apparent race, gender, and age in a matter of milliseconds. In this blink of an eye, a complex network of stereotypes, emotional prejudices, and behavioral impulses activates. These knee-jerk reactions do not require conscious bigotry, though they are worsened by it.

An example from the article…

Research by NYU psychologist Elizabeth Phelps and her colleagues has found that even dull yearbook photographs can trigger a strong neural response. When white men in their study briefly saw pictures of unfamiliar black male faces, their brain activity spiked in a region known as the amygdala, which is involved in feelings of vigilance generally, and in the fear response specifically; the amygdala lights up when we encounter people or events we judge threatening. Several other labs, including my own, have uncovered a similar link between amygdala activity and white people’s perceptions of black faces.

Other research has uncovered more subtle forms of racial bias. In one study, neurosurgeon Alexandra Golby and her colleagues showed participants images of white and black faces. When white participants saw white faces, their brains showed more activity in a region that specializes in facial recognition than when they saw black faces; the same went for black participants when they saw black faces. For some reason, those other-race faces didn’t register as human faces in the same way that same-race faces did. Later, all participants saw a series of white and black faces, some of which were new faces and some of which were faces they’d already seen during the brain scans. Sure enough, both white and black participants proved better able to remember people of their own race.

See, this is why I am growing ever more weary of the “Race is just a social construct, why are we even talking about it?” crowd, as well as the “I don’t see race” folks. Race is indeed a social construct, but physical and cultural differences, and the biased ways that people react to them–that’s real. If we refuse to acknowledge and embrace both our similarities and differences, then how will we ever neutralize negative and biased reactions to those differences? You may call me an African American or ignore my ethnic heritage and say I am simply a human being. Both things are true. But at the end of the day, I am a brown person with curly/kinky hair, broad facial features and some specific cultural behaviors, living in an environment of people with white skin, straight hair, narrow facial features and other specific cultural behaviors. I am judged by the majority for my minority characteristics–my differences. (And I judge, too.) Not calling those differences race does not solve the problem.

Oh, and you say you don’t see race? That’s B.S. You do. We all do. Our brains are hardwired to seek out those differences. It’s what you do after you see race that makes all the difference.

Talking to these people–the ones who won’t hear one mention of the word “race”–is kind of like complaining about an elephant in my living room to someone who doesn’t believe in living rooms. I say that I can’t get this danged pachyderm out of my living room, and the other person replies that living rooms are passe; that the more functional family room is where it’s at. What thinking person would still have a living room in this day and age? And I say: But…but…I still have this elephant problem.

Our concept of race is a problem, but it is not the problem. The problem, I think, is how we view difference. And from Dr. Fiske’s report it seems we are hardwired to disdain what we perceive as different. So, what do we do? More importantly, how can we ensure that future generations learn to judge others by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, or their accent, or their economic status, or their sexuality, or their ability? The Greater Good article offers hope:

Fortunately, research has also indicated which kinds of social conditions can reduce prejudice. For instance, a long line of my previous research indicates that putting people on the same team helps to overcome prejudices over time. In one study, my former student Steve Neuberg and I found that study participants had negative feelings toward a schizophrenic patient recently discharged from a mental institution—unless they were told they’d have to work with him for a chance to win a significant monetary prize. Then they noticed and judged him more by his own unique, individual traits, not by the traits associated with his stigmatized group.

Our results echo the famous “Robbers Cave” experiment led by Muzafer Sherif, a founder of social psychology. Sherif brought two groups of boys to separate parts of a campground and encouraged each group to bond as a team, not telling them about the other group at first. But as both groups became aware of the other one, a fierce rivalry developed between them. Yet Sherif and his colleagues soon posed a series of challenges to the groups that neither could solve without the help of the other. As they started to work together, their old tensions dissipated and they bonded across group lines.

These findings are part of a long line of research supporting what’s known as the Contact Hypothesis, which states that under the right conditions, contact between members of different groups can reduce conflicts and prejudices. Decades of school desegregation research support this idea, as documented by University of California, Santa Cruz, professor emeritus Thomas Pettigrew and University of Massachusetts, Amherst, psychologist Linda Tropp.

Pettigrew and Tropp have found that school integration can in fact reduce prejudice among students from different groups, but simply placing these students together isn’t enough to get them to see each other as individuals and shed their prejudices. We must also try to help them share common goals, on which they must cooperate to succeed; ensure that they’re treated as equals and have positive, noncompetitive interactions with one another; and feel like their cross-group relationship has the support of authority figures. The more of these factors in place, the more likely people are to overcome their biases. This has proven to be true not only in schools but in a variety of other social institutions, from the military to public housing projects. Our biases are not so hardwired after all, given the right social engineering.

So, it seems as if the solution may be togetherness: living together, working together, playing together, etc. It is a pity that most of our lives remain so racially segregated.

Read the entire article, “Look Twice.”

This issue of Greater Good also includes other articles on race, including “Double Blood” by Rebecca Walker, which explores the specific prejudice faced by biracial children and adults.

Do you remember last last week’s Freakonomics study that claimed biracial black/white kids were liable to be twice as messed up as kids who were monoracially black or white?Apart from the racist generalisations of that study, some of our readers (including myself) were peeved at the insinuation that the only kind of biraciality that exists is the black/white kind. But good news everybody: there’s now a study for Asian/white biracials too!

Biracial Asian-Americans are twice as likely as monoracial Asian-Americans to be diagnosed with a psychological disorder, U.S. researchers said.

At first glance, this study seems to be treading the same problematic lines as the Freakonomics study. Like, call us crazy (haha!), but us biracial Asian Americans don’t like being told by a researchers that we’re twice as likely to be bananas as our monoracial Asian friends and relatives.

But take a closer look:

Among the biracial individuals in their national survey the researchers found 34 percent had been diagnosed with a psychological disorder — such as anxiety, depression or substance abuse — compared to 17 percent of monoracial individuals.

Considering that many biracial folk from a wee age have to put up with a lot of nonsense from families, both communities of colour AND white folk, and just society in general, it doesn’t surprise me if researchers find we experience higher levels of unhappiness.

If you ask me, there are two problems with the way this study has been described. One has to do with the way we talk about mental health, and the other has to do with confusing nature with nurture.

One:
Calling anxiety, depression and substance abuse “mental disorders” medicalises or pathologises these behaviours. In other words, it makes them sound like diseases, like derivations from healthy human behaviour. But any adult (and many kids) know that’s poppycock. Many people just feel worried, sad, or drink because life is difficult. Having that reaction is not necessarily a mental disorder.

I do believe that things like generalised anxiety disorder, major depression, and substance abuse problems exist. But it’s hard to tell how these things were diagnosed for the purposes of this study. Were all the biracial Asian Americans they spoke with struggling with serious, life-long or endogenous cases of mental disorder, or were they just having a hard time? I have found that these days we’re much quicker than we should be to label the bad day blues a sign of madness.

If you’ve ever looked at one of those Depression checklists (you see them in newspapers, doctor’s offices, on the internet), you can see right away that some of the questions are a little, well, odd. They usually ask things like: “Ever had a period of 2 weeks or more where everyday you felt blue?” Come now, who hasn’t experienced a 2 week period where they felt like poop? Especially someone dealing with confusion over their identity, feelings of unbelonging, or daily racism?

I’m not saying categorically that the study didn’t use an accurate test of mental disorder. And I’m also definitely saying that I understand violent sadness can sometimes be diagnosed as a disorder. But it’s just that it would behoove us to be a bit skeptical that anxiety, depression and substance abuse observed by the study all formed Mental Disorders.

Two:
Now, this study (or at least as it has been described) makes it sound as having “mixed blood” (yick) is what causes distress. That if you have a one white parent and one Asian parent, hey presto! Genetically you will probably be mad. This suggests that the problem, ie mentally disordered behaviour, is inherent to biracial folk.

In the snapshot way the study has been described, nurture isn’t explicitly recognised. It’s not suggested that the source of those behaviours could originate elsewhere (ie an f-ed up society), and that these so-called mental disorders could simply be a response to a bad situation, rather than a congenital problem.

You could argue that the problem isn’t the study, but the media’s depiction of it. I would say yes – but at the same time it is the researchers’ responsibility to ensure their press releases emphasise all the important info – like the possible fact that culture and not just genetics is a culprit.

It took me a while to figure out that what I disliked was not being mixed race, but being mixed race in a racist culture that fetishises or misunderstands the mixed race experience. What I mean is, the problem isn’t me and my mixed race self, it’s the culture I live in.

It was actually a disability activist who helped me to understand this difference. She has a mobility disability and she commented that what she disliked was not being disabled – that was a part of her identity and experience that made her, her – but being disabled within a culture and infrastructure that ignored her right to her basic needs.

I don’t mind the suggestion that mixed race people might have a hard time. Hey, it’s true! This study, if couched in different terms, could actually be helpful and validating to communities of biracial Asian Americans who struggle with their position in a race-obsessed society.

What I mind is the suggestion that mixed race people are innately defective. This kind of conversation that mislocates the problem in the person of colour rather than the society is what creates self-hatred. This is why it’s so heartbreaking when, for eg, East Asian men or Black women talk about how they see themselves as impossibly ugly. We’re hoodwinked into thinking that we’re the ones who are bad and gross, instead of the culture we live in.

But then again, you can’t trust me. Statistically I’m a loonie.

Sidebar: Let’s also note that defining “biracial” as half-white and half-something else is not accurate! Like you could be half Pakistani and half Malaysian. You’d still be biracial! Let’s stop ignoring the experiences of people who are mixed race but have two parents of colour. Doing otherwise makes it seem like the mixed race experience is only remarkable when a white person is involved – it insists white experiences be included.

Dancing. Singing. Running.

These are just a few of the areas in which blacks are supposed to excel. With the Olympics in session, interest in blacks’ so-called prowess in the last of the trio above has been renewed.

Slate.com is a case in point. In the site’s “Explainer” section, the following question was posed: Why are Jamaicans So Good at Sprinting?

Slate answered the question by citing studies that found that West Africans tend to have higher numbers of muscle fibers responsible for “short, explosive bursts of action” than whites do—an advantage in running competitions. It also included this nugget of information:

“So far, there is no evidence that even extensive training can turn slow-twitch muscles into fast-twitch ones, though moving in the other direction is possible.”

In short, white folks don’t stand a chance against those of West African descent in track and field events. Even if they work hard, they can’t develop the innate skills that blacks have in the sport.

This response is problematic for all sorts of reasons. On one level, it robs track and field Olympians of West African descent of their accomplishments. It insinuates that these athletes didn’t triumph because of hard work but because they have an innate sprinting ability. Underlying this insinuation is the notion that whites are being unfairly disadvantaged. This idea—that blacks are advantaged to whites’ disadvantage—extends far beyond running.

When blacks achieve in the professional or academic world, there is the same sort of outcry. How often have you heard this argument in some form: Successful blacks would not have achieved what they had or been admitted to the university they attended without affirmative action. And that, say disgruntled whites, amounts to “reverse racism.”

Why can’t blacks simply be allowed to enjoy an achievement without having doubt cast on it, without someone protesting that they didn’t do it because of hard work or self-reliance but because they were given a hand-out, be it on the legislative front or from Mother Nature? Moreover, why are black athletes always subjected to such scrutiny? Do blacks demand to know why the best swimmers or hockey players are overwhelmingly white? Do blacks cite studies that identify a European gene that gives whites an advantage in these sports, all the while pouting that they’re being unfairly disadvantaged?

The answer, of course, is no. That’s a good thing, as the field of performance genetics is still considered suspect in the scientific community. A thoughtful Slate reader was kind enough to point this out, as well as the following, in the comments section:

“Athletic performance is determined by a complex mixture of multiple genes and many interacting environmental factors (diet, training, culture, etc.). Although genes are certainly important, ACTN3 alone is not the explanation: this gene predicts only around 2% of the variation in muscle strength and sprint performance in the general European population, and is likely just one of dozens or even hundreds of genes that contribute to athletic prowess.”

Even with these facts pointed out, I wonder how many of Slate’s readers will insist on discounting the achievements of black track and field athletes by arguing that blacks have a biological edge. Whites, you see, aren’t on a level playing field.

To be white is so unfair.

- – - – -

Latoya’s Note –

The conversation over on Slate about the nature of scientific studies is beneficial in light of some past conversations about the how bias can taint a scientific study. Here are some of the more relevant comments:

Reply to: Why are Jamaicans so good at sprinting?
by windorchard
08/19/2008, 8:45 AM #
Reply

I find it disappointing that Slate has included this story at all. These findings merely indicate a correlation, and they say nothing about causation. We could just as likely attribute greater skill at sprinting to having dark skin rather than having active ACTN3. Or we could argue that the Jamaican diet explains these differences rather than genes (the logic is the same).

In order to establish causation, we would need to select a group of roughly equally skilled athletes who all lack this gene, genetically modify half of them so that this select subgroup subsequently had an active ACTN3 gene, and then test the two groups to see if we see any differences in their athletic performances. If we notice such a difference, then we might be able to make a causal link between these variables. Of course such research would violate a number of ethical principles; however, for the sake of argument, we would need a procedure like this in order to begin to consider the questions posed by the article. I wish the Slate author had discussed this significant weakness in her paper. Without such a discussion, too much room is left for misinterpretation of the summarized findings.

Another weakness of this article is the fact that it does not appear that any of the winning Jamaican athletes referenced underwent any testing to see if they actually have this genetic trait. So, again, we don’t know if the trait had anything to do with their success at all — remember, not all Jamaicans have this trait. And for those who managed to win without this trait, how do we explain this?

This piece really annoys me for two reasons. First, it undermines the legitimacy of the hard work that these Jamaican athletes have put in because it implies that they had an unfair advantage that non-Jamaican athletes lack. Second, it does not address the history of racism behind such research. Specifically, I have yet to see a study examining the genetic cause of why White athletes tend to dominate at water polo, swimming and diving, and other stereotypically “White” sports. There is a reason that these questions are not asked, and I think addressing this issues would be at least as (if not more) interesting as the questions posed by the present article.

In the future, I hope that Slate does a better job distinguishing between correlational designs and true experiments, as well as addressing how the biases of researchers influences not only the questions they ask, but the conclusions they draw concerning their findings.

Slate really dropped the ball on this.

Re: Reply to: Why are Jamaicans so good at sprinting?
by Vashti
08/19/2008, 10:20 AM #
Reply

Windorchard, I could not have said it better! The journalist behind this article exemplifies the dangerous disconnect between true science and science interpretation and reporting. The average layman will read that article and believe it to be a legitimate representation of the actual science involved — when it is not.

I also like your comment about how the biases of scientist affect the type of questions they formulate. I have been a firsthand witness to this, and can say that science becomes repulsive when its methodology is skewed by social stereotypes.

Seriously, reporters need a course in causal inference!

I think you went overboard with this
by ayalonValley
08/19/2008, 3:13 PM #
Reply

the fact that there is an history of racism behind ethnicity-based research does NOT mean that we will never be able to conduct any research, or postulate theories that will have to be proved or disproved. Your demand for totally outrageous conditions for performing research (genetically modify people …) thinly masks the fact you do not want ANY research that might find a difference between ethnic groups. BTW I am not claiming that such difference exists or was proved in this case; but I am annoyed at the attempt of muzzling any discussion of these subjects by raising the “racism” flag. At some point I believe this is self-defeating, and will contribute to more people believing in this.

as for this:

“Specifically, I have yet to see a study examining the genetic cause of why White athletes tend to dominate at water polo, swimming and diving, and other stereotypically “White” sports”

Very weak, my friend. All these sports, as has been pointed time and again, need MONEY which does not exist in poor, non-white countries, nor in poor, non-white population areas in developed countries.

Re: I think you went overboard with this
by texyank
08/19/2008, 3:29 PM #
Reply

Training and traveling to international track meets is not a “money sport”? Pretty weak arguement. I’m pretty sure they have plenty of water in Jamaca to swim in.

Re: I think you went overboard with this
by windorchard
08/19/2008, 6:33 PM #
Reply

As I was taught to practice science (and perhaps it differs across fields), one does not “prove” anything with science; one supports hypotheses. So, science is not an objective enterprise, it is one based on aggregated studies, analyses, and opinions. If science was clear and objective, we would not be having this debate.

I was taught that one must ask why one is performing a particular study and also consider what the ramifications of your findings might be. And yes, I was taught that some studies perhaps should not be done. I suspect you would agree that there are some studies that should not be done. We merely appear to disagree on which studies fall into which category.

My concern with cross-cultural studies like the one that precipitated this discussion lies in the fundamental understanding of correlation, causation, and research methods. Unless you can actually manipulate your independent variables, it is impossible to make causal statements. Therefore, all comparisons of men and women, Blacks and Whites, or any group of people who already come to a study having already been ascribed a quality that a researcher might like to use as an independent variable is automatically confounded. This is not something that is my opinions. This is what the scientific method says.

Does this mean we ought never conduct such studies. Certainly we ought! Sometimes such studies are very useful. However, those of us who do such work (and I sometimes do such work) must be conscientious to convey to those who read our work that our findings are merely correlational, and therefore must be carefully considered.

Further, I believe that researchers have a responsibility to try (even if we are not always successful) to not do research that harms people, particularly the people we are studying. In the present era, many cross-cultural studies (though not all of them) have great potential for harm, and must be undertaken with great thoughtfulness.

(Photo Credit: Slate)